News

Is this Alex Salmond’s last supper?

Ashen-faced and head bowed, Nicola Sturgeon's body language spoke a thousand words. As Alex Salmond berated Iain Gray in the Holyrood debating chamber for having the temerity to cast doubt on the integrity of his protégé, the deputy first minister was visibly shaken.

Few who know Sturgeon well - even her rivals - would ever have questioned her integrity or suggested she is anything less than a consummate political operator.

Yet her decision to write to a court pleading for Abdul Rauf, a convicted fraudster from her Govan constituency, to be spared jail was emblematic of a profound malaise within the SNP leadership whose surefootedness has deserted it. Even loyal colleagues are grumbling about trouble at the top.

A string of errors of judgement have left the SNP facing its most serious crisis since it swept to power. Meanwhile, a lacklustre opposition, which, until now, has failed to score many points against